Fish out of water - Lanius in air
by Lanny-Sama
Summary: A Lanius is offered a position on a big federation cruiser. Too bad neither the crew nor he himself realize what potential danger he can be to the ones actually breathing.


A/N: I really enjoy the idea of the Lanius, so I wrote this. Partly inspired by "Don't be afraid" by ladykniggit.

**FTL – the Lanius**

He did not understand them, and they did not understand him. Quite a worrisome position to be in, really. Rem stood silently in his holding-pod, watching a tittering crew of green-scythe aliens search the ship for any remaining crewmembers. Judging from the blood and ectoplasm caking their green blades, most had been taken care of already. Rem's bindings were unrelenting, holding his metal body completely still within the pod. The situation was not looking good. Rem used to think that organic weapons would never penetrate his outer metal plating... A green-scythe boarding party on the ship he'd been on previously had proved him wrong.

The green scythes didn't take prisoners unless they were worth scrap, and Rem knew that he wasn't one of those- unless when you broke him down into tiny bits. He really hoped the green scythes didn't know that. Maybe they would pick up after the slavetraders? Continue trying to sell him?

The green scythes were chattering outside of the cell and a few moments later two different aliens entered the slavehold. One looked mechanical, its hands looking more like tools than actual fingers, grey from head to toe, and the second one was simply said, grotesquely pink and soft. Rem wracked his brain trying to remember the names of their species- had he even seen a pink one ever before? He couldn't be sure, he'd never been unlucky enough to be separated from his fellow Lanius until recently...

The aliens make noise, communicate, but the sound doesn't penetrate his pod, nor would he understand them if it did. He wished that he had a translator nearby- even the one as bad as the one on his previous ship, just so he could hear what they were saying. The aliens were opening all the cell doors, and eventually they came to his pod. They seemed to be hesitating, the pink alien trying to look in through the port and making weird faces, but in the end the green scythes gathered around the pod and opened it.

Breathing gas immediately streamed in, and Rem's metal plating was crawling- hurriedly trying to dispel the gas. The scent of metal, gas, rubber, fire, blood, alien, pheromones- it was making him dizzy. Compared to the subtle smells that could be found floating in tiny bits through the vacuum, the breather-gasses from these aliens were like an asteroid to the face. The aliens were making noises, vibrating the gas around them in their signature yet ineffective ways, but Rem did not understand them. The aliens sucked in large quantities of the horrid gasses, and he turned his gaze away from the show of plain addiction. He could see further into the ship now, and he saw the remains of a slug trader smeared all over a wall. Comforting.

One of the slaves made sounds, and the boarders made sounds too, before pointing straight at Rem and making a resolute statement. Metal plates in his body shifted as he tensed himself for an attack. He was not going to go easily! He took an agressive stance, but the aliens didn't seem to recognize it. He struggled to find words, any words in that strange language that the gas-breathers spoke. He remembered some from the translation device, and uttered them in the hopes of keeping them at bay.

"Scrapp metal. Slaiv - ve. Insufficie – ent!"

They did not respond well, and only looked at each other confusedly. They continued talking or asking, a complete collection of absolute gibberish that he could not find familiarity in. He backed away just a bit and the aliens stopped their talk for a moment. One of them, the hunched grey alien with deft looking hands and a toolbelt stepped forward, and to Rem's surprise the creature managed to sign a few Lanius words with its strange hands.

_"Join. Rest free." _Rem hesitated.

_ "Received message. Contemplating."_

The aliens talked to each other for a short while, and then waited. The slaves were quiet too, their eyes focused on him. He did not like the aliens, not one of them. Rem looked at the only person he could communicate with and asked;

_"Consequences if answer is negatory?" _

The airbreather with his tool-hands hesitated and turned to the pink alien glibbering something in their weird breather-blabber. The pink alien's face wheeled through a range of expressions and Rem wondered what it all meant. He had little to no experience with aliens, besides battling them on occasion. His only means of communication, grey tool-hands, turned towards him and signed;

_ "... negat–ory is. you freed." _

The grey skinned alien had trouble getting the words out, but the message was clear enough. If he refused they would set him free. He signed a short answer at the grey skinned alien.

_"Contemplating..."_ They would set him free? It would not be easy to find scrap without a ship- the slavers had taken him too far away from the metal deposits that had woken him from hibernation. He could try his luck alone in the void, or he could join these aliens... there would always be the option to vent himself out of the ship. He nodded and signed the grey tool-handed alien.

_"Accept" _

_ "Join crew"_

_ "Accept." _

The grey alien turned to the pink one and talked. The pink's face changed expressions again and he extended a hand. Rem narrowed his eyes and signed for him to stay away. The grey alien caught his message and spoke shortly to the pink alien. The grey alien turned to him and gave him a short introduction. The pink one was the pilot, the green scythes fought, and the grey tool-alien repaired what broke.

The slaves were teleported first, and Rem was beamed aboard his new residence right after. The unpleasant feeling of the gasses the aliens always dwelt in hit him like a brick as soon as he was teleported, and he shuddered. He hoped that his place would not be flooded with the stuff as well, he was not addicted to it at all, that nasty habit!

The ship was an enormous cruiser with an artillery beam and a dozen rooms for the crew and supplies. It was battered and bruised, and had obviously been repaired over a dozen times. Bits of plating and scrap hung loose, and Rem itched to pull them off for consumption. It had been a while since the last decent meal he'd had... The breathers on board all made similar facial expressions when they saw him, again blasting him with their useless words Rem simply tried to remember their faces as he passed, but with the way their faces changed shape, it was likely impossible. He just hoped he could tell the crew apart from boarders, should they get boarded. The grey skin alien led him to a room filled with lights and control panels.

_"Engin-es." _

Rem walked over to the panel and carefully familiarized himself with the small rounded buttons. He could work with this. Most definitely. The pilot had a direct connection to the engine room, and could ask for a burst of power or a takeback on power with a single on-screen picture. It was a far more advanced ship than he had expected. What were they doing that needed such heavy artillery?... He signed at the grey-skinned tool alien, but the alien clearly had not understood him as he signed back;

_"Work you – engin-es." _

Rem decided that it did not matter. Heavy weaponry only increased his chances of living longer on this ship. One of the doors to the engine room opened and the pink pilot stepped out, waving his five-appendage'd hand in the air enthusiastically.

The pink pilot spoke to the grey tool alien for a while, and after some time the tool-handy alien left the room. The pilot returned to his steering panel and looked over his shoulder at Rem, leaving the door open. A green scythe entered a short moment later and started talking with the pink pilot again. It seemed angry, and the pink alien made loud noises back at it until they finally quieted. The green scythe sat down near the pink pilot and stared at Rem. Rem recognized it as the leader of the boarding party- it hadn't quite succeeded in cleaning its scythes from the blood of the slavers, and its big bulbous eyes never left Rem. The pink alien looked at him over his shoulder with yet another expression Rem could not understand, and then turned his gaze back to the piloting system. The sound of the FTL drive echoed through the ship and they were pulled to the next beacon. The hunt for scrap began!

He was used to fighting on a ship, and was almost soothing to be back in the business again. The automated scout they had been fighting against exploded into hundred bits of scrap, and Rem waited anxiously for the rest of the crew to collect the precious metal. He did not feel confident with the green scythe watching him from the cockpit, so he stayed at his controls and tried to optimize the engines a bit more. The gas was still floating around the room. It took far too long to filter if you asked him. Were they continually spraying more of the stuff into the room? He shifted uneasily and the green scythe in the cockpit followed his every move. The pink alien pilot coughed inconspicuously, and activated the FTL.

As soon as they arrived on the next beacon his panels lit up and he knew they were battling. The green scythe in the cockpit scrambled off to the teleporters and the pink alien was furiously evading a few laser shots. A quick look out of the window showed an impressive purple ship, decorated to blend in with the countless nebula's littering the vacuum. Ah- the slimy formless aliens. Something was yelled over the intercom, and with a weird shuttering rumble the engine room was suddenly crawling with the slimy aliens so often found in nebula's. Small laser weaponry was pointed his way, and the pink pilot shouted as he too was attacked. A sudden surge of electricity ran through the ship, and the doors leading to the other rooms were jammed tightly shut. A hacking device, locking them in with the hostile slimers. Six of them. There was no way he could defeat them in hand to hand combat. His eyes were drawn to the closed doors to the outside. If he could open those doors, they would be sucked out together with the gas! He sprang for the doors, and a scorching hot projectile burned a large metal plate off his left arm, the molten metal seeping into the gaps on his body. He pried his hands -mostly his right one- in between the two sturdy sliding doors, and wrenched them open. There was an ominous hissing sound when the air left the ship, and a slug jumped on his back, stabbing something sharp in between his metal plating, but Rem reached back, and threw the slug out of the ship, watching a trail of slime follow it into space. The breathing gas was rushing past him, and the remainder of the boarding party teleported back to their ship with panicked chittering. The screaming intercom went silent in the absence of gas, and Rem took a small moment for himself. It was bliss to feel the embrace of the void again. Nothing touching him, just that wonderful emptiness that made him feel cosy on the inside- but they were in battle. His arm hanging uselessly by his side he dragged back to his panel and waited for input from the pilot. Nothing showed, no instructions or damage reports... Even worse- the piloting system was... down?

He turned from his panel and looked at the cockpit. The pink alien laid on the floor in the engines room, and he had a new expression on his face. It did not look healthy.

His hands were clasping his throat like he was wounded, and he crawled weakly over the floor like a squashed bug, mouth gaping open and closed, and his eyes locked on the door in a wild panic. What was he doing?! He should be steering the ship- was he mortally wounded?

Rem rushed over to the twitching alien and pulled the weak pink hands from his throat, trying to find a wound or another damaged part on the alien. The pink pilot was scrabbling his weak fingers over his plating and gaping at him- his eyes rolling back in his head. What was going on?! The door the pink one had been moving towards was budging slightly, and a set of green scythe pincers appeared in between the two parts of the door. A tiny slit appeared, and more of the breathing gas slipped by Rem as it was sucked into the void. He gestured quickly at the green scythed alien, to tell it that something had happened to the pink alien and to come over quickly- The door was nearly open, and the grey alien's tool-hand stuck through the doors. His signing was frantic.

_"OPEN! OPEN!" _

Rem jumped up and stuck his one functioning metal hand in between the gap to help wrench the door open, the system screeching in protest and tiny slivers of metal dropping from where the door scraped against the frame. The greenscythe shot past him and dragged the pink alien into the next room. Rem followed, and the grey tool alien shut the door behind them, preventing the escape of the last breathing gas. Nearly immediately after the door closed, the green scythe had pounced on top of him. It was screeching at him, and its pincers dug in between his metal plates. Rem retaliated with pure hostile instinct. He slammed his right arm into the insect-like body as roughly as he could and felt lukewarm juice running over him.

It had not been the right move. The green scythe had been holding back in its pounce, Rem could tell as soon as the huge blades jammed themselves so deep into his metal that he was nearly about to fall apart. He immediately fell still- surrendering, surrendering. He couldn't take any more.

The green-scythe alien probably had no idea how close it was to tearing him apart. It bashed him against the floor angrily even as he had long surrendered and bits of his plating fell off. It made Rem sick to see, but he kept still and tried not to provoke the greenscythe any further. He had been wrong- these aliens were insane and not viable as friendly beings whatsoever! There were two loud explosions on the ship, and the grey tool alien had forced the next door open, holding the broken pink alien in his arms. He blabbered something in his monotone voice, and the green scythed alien pulled Rem's body along with his scythes to the next room.

The two aliens quickly forced their way through the next few doors dragging the pink one and Rem along until they reached the medbay. Healing fumes, nanoids and nanobots immediately set to work on the pink pilot, and a few went in his direction before the greenscythe quickly typed something and the medbay ignored his wounds. Another explosion rocked the ship, followed by a voice saying something over the intercom. Out of the corner of his eye he could see purple scrap metal drift by the medbay viewports. They had won the battle with the other ship.

More crewmembers entered the medbay, most of them sporting gashes or large bruises, and their breathertalk was blending together in one single incessant noise that he could not block out nor make anything of. The big green scythe still held him down, its sharp blades nearly breaking his left arm off with the way he had forcibly pushed them into him. The grey skin had left the room as soon as the pink pilot had been set down in the medbay, and Rem was feeling more and more anxious. He had no breather-words to defend himself with, or to inquire what had happened at all! He tried anyway.

"Scrap metal. In-sufficient. Slave." They did not even spare him a glance, and Rem wished his body was not so battered. A moment later the grey tool alien entered the medbay, and Rem nearly got himself dismembered when he moved unexpectedly under the green scythe's grip.

_"Demand freedom." _He signed out to the grey tool alien, but he did not answer him and instead came forward with an infopad and a heavy crease in his robotic face. His tool-like hands came too close for comfort, and Rem was getting the heavy impression he was going to get disassembled in an orderly fashion to serve as scrap. Before he could lash out, the grey alien pulled away, exclaiming something that stirred up more noise from the breathers.

_"DEMAND ANSWER." _

He was promptly ignored as the grey alien continued to talk with the other aliens. The green scythe dragged him out of the room, and tossed him in a side-room, firmly locking the door behind him. A prisoner once again. Rem tried to get into a better position and leant against the wall. His left arm was basically useless. His carefully arranged plating was a mess, forced askew, scratched and terribly dented. It would mend, but not without some scrap to replace the damaged parts.

There was no other door than the one the green scythe was probably still guarding. With considerable effort, Rem started pulling bits of plating from the floor with his right hand where it would be least visible. If he wanted to make it to the airlock he'd have to withstand at least a few hits from the green scythe. He was halfway through patching up the wound in his left arm when the door slid open. He stood ready to force his way past and onto his freedom, but any hopes of actually escaping were dashed when three green scythes and the grey tool alien stood in the doorway. There was no way he would get past that. He mentally prepared himself for a short-lived and suicidal battle against the aliens. They lingered by the door, and the tool-handed alien signed a few Lanius words.

_"La-nius – plating drain gas-ses?" _What a weird question, of course it did. It was only natural wasn't it.

_"Affirmative." _The grey skinned alien was quiet for a moment, before asking;

_"Lan-ius – a-ware? Lack of oxy-gen – become death."_

Now THAT had him genuinely surprised. They actually needed it? It was not a strange addiction, a fetish- it was what they needed to survive?! So when he had opened the outer doors to vent out the invading slimes- He locked eyes with the grey skin and panicked to defend himself from the charge of murder.

_"Did not know! No info was shared – Murder unintentional. Extermination unacceptable!" _The green scythes clicked their blades together threateningly and stepped forward to protect the grey alien- probably mistaking his words as a hostile action. The grey tool alien said something, and they hesitantly pulled back.

_"pilot- un-awa-re Lanuis drain gas. Extermination unecessary." _

He was not going to die- they were not going to reduce him to scrap. The green scythes did not look friendlier at all, but they had not attacked. There was still hope.

_"...Course of action?" _

The grey skin had no direct answer to that. Instead he simply stated that Rem would stay in the room until they had discussed the situation. Then they left, the green scythes staying by the door. Rem simply waited, and after a while later the small room was devoid of oxygen. Rem was near falling in hibernation when the door opened, and the grey tool alien set down a box filled to the brim with scrap. He looked a bit weird in the face as he quickly closed the door again. It reminded him of how the pink pilot had looked, when he had run out of breathe-gas. It was the face of dying. He tried to remember that face.

It was not much later that the pink pilot entered, alive and accompanied by several still-angry green scythes. The grey tool was there too, ever present as translator as the pink one blabbered on in his breather-talk. The grey skinned alien luckily gave him the abridged version.

_"Frank for-give. New posi-tions offer. Weapon room- re-pair breach... boarding?" _

Rem nodded slowly and answered with weakly signed words

_"Requesting medical attention- hibernation imminent for damage repair..." _

The aliens stepped aside, and he awkwardly moved through the small and previously hostile group. Once he arrived the medbay swarmed him with nanobots and fumes, adding new metal to his plating and reinforcing the old plating. It had been a very long time since he had felt that good.

Nobody else had followed him in, which he found more than fair. They lived off gas after all... Gas that his plating automatically eradicated. How strange...

The grey-skin spoke through the intercom, giving him quick directions on the weapons room. Rem did not encounter anyone in the halls, even though they were flooded with the breathe-gas. The weapons room was at the very front of the ship, not near any of the other vital systems, and with only opening two doors, he could vent all oxygen from it in a few seconds. It was a great place for himself, he mused as he familiarized himself with the weaponry installed on the ship.

The rebel flagship was too strong. Rem was no longer busy with the weapons, instead putting all his work into repairing the panels and lights that had been blown to bits by an incoming missle. He had no idea who was even alive any more. The person who usually spoke through the intercom usually was not speaking, and the teleporter was broken. The green scythes- called Mantis apparently- were still on the rebel flagship. The sensors had broken down, as had communication- there was no way of knowing if any of them were still alive.

Another missle hit the ship- and all of a sudden the room he was in started splitting in two. The stars and planets of space became visible above him as the hull broke into nothing but scrap. He looked back, and saw the rest of the crew floating as well. One Mantis was moving still, slashing scythes at nothing. The grey skin -Engi- and the pink pilot -human- were dead, both floating tranquilly through space. The Mantis that had boarded the rebel flagship had nothing to return to, if they even lived at all.

The hostile fire stopped- there was nothing but scrap to fire on any more. The rebel fleet advanced, moving towards the fragile Federation base in the midst of all the madness. The Mantis that had been floating through space had fallen still and was making slow spirals in the vacuum.

He lingered on the ship, and started to collect bits of the ship, amassing a small pile of scrap metal. He had nothing to worry about. He could see Lanius cruisers in the distance, already scavenging dead ships at the edges of the war. They would arrive near this ship soon enough.

A Lanius cruiser advanced on the broken parts of the ship, and Rem climbed inside. The two Lanius inside barely showed any sign of surprise at seeing him, and one of them showed him to the weapons room. There was no time for introductions- there was metal to be salvaged, and it was first come first serve.


End file.
